I caught this article, “Top Ten Articles on Digital-Engineer.net” over on Graphicstart, which had one, very interesting piece in it’s top ten list:

7. Preflighters around the world: This is you

If we click on that preflight article above, we see it is about an Enfocus survey on preflighting (As Tele2002 accurately said in the first comment, that is more “postflighting“, but anyway.). It is the last comment which I also wanted to share, for it brings home the importance of education;

Marco Kramer |
Yes I suppose so! I didn’t know about Prepressure and have bookmarked it. Looks like I’ve got me some reading to do! Great info about JDF as well.

The boys from Markzware also wrote about this topic: PDF Preflight Problems; same as fifteen years ago -Enfocus survey results
http://www.markzware.com/blogs/pdf-preflight-problems-same-enfocus-survey/2009/06/26/

Source: http://www.digital-engineer.net/archive/entry/preflighters-around-the-world-this-is-you/#comment-12

On that note, don’t forget that FlightCheck Professional, the tool for both the native file preflight as well as the postflight or check on the resulting PDF document, is out as version 6.5. Check out all of the new features and functions for Adobe Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat PDF, QuarkXPress and more here:

http://www.markzware.com/flightcheck_professional

Soft proofing and ad preflight have long gone good together; sort of like white wine with fish. Thus it was with interest that we read of this newly revised product offering from Vio for magazine and newspaper publishers:

Vio relaunches Certified Soft Proofing software as part of Adsend

printweek.com, 01 October 2009

Vio has redeveloped its Vio Certified Soft Proofing (VCSP) software, which is now being offered as part of its Adsend browser application.

In addition, the software, which is designed to enable advertisers to deliver display advertising directly to a publisher, has recently been adopted by the Guardian and the Observer, Vio has said.

The new software enables publishers to mandate a soft proof or to offer it as an option by publication or even by advertising type, the company said.
Source:
http://www.printweek.com/Vio-relaunches-Certified-Soft-Proofing-software-part-Adsend/

Markzware FlightCheck Professional v6.5 is newly released with a host of new features and functions, including Quark 8, Adobe InDesign Illustrator, PDF CS4, Adobe CS 3 (including Adobe CS 3 Master Collection), Adobe CS 4, and other tweaked file format support- more than 50 of them. A soft-proof is only as good as the preflight report and a quality assurance check done on the layout before the Acrobat PDF output was performed. (Acrobat or any flavor of print industry standard PDFs.). Just as Jon Warner from Trade Press Media Group told us last month in this interview…  Read more... (254 words, estimated 1:01 mins reading time)

Here is an interesting piece from Dr. Joe of WhatTheyThink.com titled, “June 10 Economic Webinar Q&A.” This bit on the average number of employees at a printer and it’s potential relation to graphic designers taking on more of the role of prepress is what I wanted us to zoom in on here:

Q.  Is the average size of successful printing companies increasing or decreasing? Sales volume and or employee count as a measure.

A. Sales are down and our industry has a habit of calibrating itself by adding or shedding businesses as needed. The inflation-adjusted sales per employee is actually remarkably steady, which indicates this. The average size of a commercial printing business has been on a very slow decline for decades. It was around 26 employees in the late 1980s and was just above 19 by 2006. That says more about desktop publishing replacing prepress than it says about anything else.
Source: http://members.whattheythink.com/home/drjoe269.cfm  Read more... (460 words, estimated 1:50 mins reading time)

As the inventors of preflight holding US Patent # 5,963,641, Markzware has been busy innovating within this fast-moving technical niche since 1995. Many have referred to Markzware as ‘the preflight experts.’ So, it was interesting as I read about the ‘few issues’ Mr. James Warmser discovered within Adobe InDesign’s Live Preflight:

“Up until CS4, InDesign’s preflight feature was subpar at best. Luckily preflight in CS4 has been completely redesigned from the ground up. My friend James Wamser (he printed the InDesign Secrets posters) and I were talking and although we both agree this is a great feature, he shared a few issues that he has discovered with the new preflight. The first few are the observations that he has come across and I added a few of my own.”
SOURCE: http://indesignsecrets.com/cs4s-preflight-limitations.php

You can read the article to see the details, but here is a general list of issues or things that this Adobe feature appears to lack:  Read more... (401 words, estimated 1:36 mins reading time)

• Four Color Text
• Bleed/trim hazard
• Profile Error reporting
• Preflight profile sharing with Acrobat
• Fonts not allowed rule
• Custom profile for everyone to download
• Slow performance
• Non-Proportional Scaling